Multi-stakeholder workshops to build sustainable, resilient irrigation schemes that support food sovereignty.
Addressing salinization, resource conflicts, and infrastructure decay: a training program to learn how to rethink irrigation schemes with all local stakeholders.
Today’s large-scale irrigation schemes are reaching their limits: infrastructure degradation, soil salinization, water-sharing tensions, and weakened governance. In light of these findings, simple physical renovation of structures is no longer enough. A more comprehensive transformation of irrigated territories is required, jointly coordinating infrastructure, water-sharing rules, and production methods.
COSTEA believes that this agroecological re-engineering must be built through a participatory and systemic approach, involving all relevant stakeholders (researchers, development agencies, farmers’ organizations, and local actors) to reorient the design, rehabilitation, and management of irrigation schemes toward sustainable, resilient models that promote food sovereignty.
COSTEA organizes participatory workshops on the agroecological re-engineering of collective irrigation systems, bringing together research, field expertise, and local stakeholders. These workshops aim to characterize the technical, land-tenure, and organizational constraints of the schemes; experiment with re-engineering scenarios using the ARIHA serious game; observe field realities on specific irrigation plots; evaluate the “cost of inaction” (the impacts of maintaining the status quo); and co-construct a political advocacy case to guide future investments.
For example, a workshop was held from June 2 to 4, 2026, in Saint-Louis (Senegal), organized jointly with ISRA-BAME and SAED, in connection with survey work conducted by students from UGB’s UFR Agro and Institut Agro Montpellier. It brought together 27 participants from a wide range of national and regional institutions: research and higher education (ISRA-BAME, CIRAD, UGB), irrigation development and management companies (SAED and SODAGRI in Senegal, Office du Niger in Mali, SONADER in Mauritania, ANADER in Chad, NOVEC in Morocco), as well as local stakeholders and farmers’ organizations (COSTEA, DyTAES/DyTAEL Podor networks, REFAN). The work focused on four areas: water governance and management, agricultural practices and indigenous knowledge, social inclusion of women and youth, and the re-engineering of hydro-agricultural developments in the face of climate shocks.
This session confirmed that agroecological re-engineering cannot be reduced to public works: it requires a joint reconfiguration of infrastructure, water-sharing rules, and production methods, as well as a territorial approach capable of resolving resource conflicts and co-constructing rules with all local actors. The results are being compiled into a Policy Brief for public decision-makers and funders, and are directly informing ongoing projects in the Senegal River Valley, including SAED’s DELTA program, prior to international promotion at events such as the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) congress in Marseille. The system is intended to be replicated in other irrigated territories as part of Phase 2 of COSTEA’s field studies.